Public policy on COVID-19 infodemic management

The paper examines the foreign experience of public policy in the field of COVID-19 infodemic management. Info-demic is interpreted as information redundancy that makes it difficult to find accurate data on the pandemic in a digital society. Infodemiology, an interdisciplinary science in the field of health informatics, is used to study infodemic. The public policy actors developing and implementing measures to contain the information epidemic (governments, media, scientific communities, the technology sector, civil society) are identified. Initiatives to combat misinformation about COVID-19 implemented by social platforms, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), WHO Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN), ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development are described. The responses to infodemic range from fact-checking, criminalizing false information about COVID-19 to the formation of digital competencies and medical literacy of the population. It is shown that an effective mechanism for responding to infodemic is an intersectoral interaction between the scientific, political, medical and media communities.